DRINKING WATER
From Utility To Ally: Smart Water Management For Customer Satisfaction
Smart water technologies improve customer satisfaction through accurate billing, leak detection, and data-driven insights, helping utilities build trust, reduce losses, and enhance operational efficiency.
DRINKING WATER CASE STUDIES AND WHITE PAPERS
-
Playing The Hand That's Dealt: How To Make Challenging Groundwater Better
The city of Lemoore, CA, recruited a team of water treatment and construction specialists to address water quality and scarcity concerns.
-
How To Size An Advanced Oxidation System For A Variety Of Treatment Options
While UV AOP technology continues to gain traction, there are few regulations or standards for it, making it difficult for engineers to specify equipment size for new installations.
-
Understand RF Propagation Of AMR/AMI Systems
Most Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) systems installed in utilities use radio frequency (RF) communication. RF communication is also used for two-way radios, wireless supervisory control, data acquisition (SCADA) systems, office wireless networks, routers and cell phones.
-
Valve Health Diagnostics
Valves are one of the most common assets in the process industry, spanning all verticals. Chemicals, refineries, and petrochemicals, however, will find improved valve health diagnostics useful for critical valves and controllers in their plants, while upstream and midstream oil and gas companies may be focused on much larger, critical valves like pipeline or subsea valves. Using Seeq, process manufacturers are able to implement a condition-based monitoring analysis to monitor valve health across an entire fleet. Engineers can utilize the historical data to accurately create a predictive maintenance forecast and preemptively detect valve failures before they occur.
-
How To Clean, Inspect, And Calibrate pH Sensors
Once a pH sensor is installed in the process and operating, how do you determine when it is time to take the sensor out of the process and do a cleaning, or a calibration? Does one perform both a cleaning and a calibration or just a cleaning, or just a calibration?
-
Microfiltration Membranes Lead The Way In Water Filtration
For water treatment professionals prioritizing precision and efficiency, hollow-fiber microfiltration membranes are revolutionizing the way industries and municipalities treat water.
-
EPA Scientists And Partners Team Up To Tackle Cape Cod's Nutrient Pollution And Protect Water Quality
Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is known for its picturesque villages, sandy beaches, and seafood. But these iconic coastal waters, and the communities and ecosystems they support, are under an increasing threat from nutrient pollution.
-
How To Earn Straight 'A's For Water Accountability
Specific needs for data accountability can vary widely across diverse market applications — industrial, municipal, agricultural, etc. Yet the underlying goal of each application is to gain the best insights for informed decision-making at the best overall value between capital expense and operating expense. Water monitoring Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offers new ways to achieve exactly that.
-
AMI And Leak Detection Stops The Flow Of Non-Revenue Water
How are water utilities getting the deluge of real and apparent water losses under control? The City of Elmhurst, a stately suburb west of Chicago with a population of about 46,000 residents, is a case study on how one municipality took on the issue.
-
A Legacy Of Clean Water
Helping to maintain clean water is part of the Whalen family history, a story that begins in the mid-1990s with a father’s fervent belief that his research could make a difference and his son’s intense desire to ensure it did.
DRINKING WATER APPLICATION NOTES
-
LC-MS Analysis Of 33 PFAS Compounds In 5 Minutes11/4/2021
In response to environmental testing demands for faster LC-MS analyses, the new Ascentis® Express PFAS HPLC and delay columns allow the highly efficient separation of 33 PFAS compounds in 5 minutes with reduced background contamination.
-
Improved Efficiencies In TOC Wastewater Analysis For Standard Method 5310B And EPA Method 41510/16/2014Total organic carbon (TOC) measurement is of vital importance to the operation of water treatment due to organic compounds comprising a large group of water pollutants. TOC has been around for many years, and although it is a relatively simple analysis in theory, operational efficiency is paramount.
-
A Comparative Study Of On-Line And Laboratory TOC Analyzers For Analysis Of Raw And Finished Drinking Water4/5/2013
Total organic carbon (TOC) analysis is an important indicator of water quality throughout the drinking water treatment process. Raw source water is progressively treated in chemical coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, and filtration steps to remove particulate matter and natural organic matter (NOM).
-
The Basics: ORP and Free Chlorine Monitoring5/13/2014
Oxidation Reduction Potential or Redox is the activity or strength of oxidizers and reducers in relation to their concentration. Oxidizers accept electrons, reducers lose electrons. Examples of oxidizers are: chlorine, hydrogen peroxide, bromine, ozone, and chlorine dioxide. Examples of reducers are sodium sulfite, sodium bisulfate and hydrogen sulfide. Like acidity and alkalinity, the increase of one is at the expense of the other.
-
Application Note: YSI Real-Time Water Quality Monitoring And The IPSWATCH-EMPACT Program12/28/2005The Ipswich and Parker Rivers watersheds lie only a short distance north of Boston, MA. The first settlements in these watersheds began in the early 1600s. Since that time, residents have relied heavily on the natural resources of the Parker and Ipswich Rivers, their coastal estuaries and Plum Island Sound, which is known as the Great Marsh. This ecosystem has been designated and protected by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC).
-
LC-MS Analysis Of PFAS Compounds In EPA 533 After Supelclean™ ENVI-WAX SPE Cleanup8/29/2022
This application note demonstrates the extraction and subsequent analysis of 25 related analytes from water using Supelco SPE cartridges.
-
Application Note: Water Flows From The Golden Hills Of California1/20/2010Each morning John Johnson drives the few miles from his smalltown home in northern California to the Center at Pardee Reservoir. Nestled among the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, the reservoir is a long 100 miles away from San Francisco Bay. By YSI
-
Reduced Bore Electromagnetic Flowmeter10/29/2021
Being able to accurately measure both the quantity and rate of water passing through a water distribution system is crucial to gain an informed understanding of overall efficiency. As such, achieving a measurement that is exact as possible can have a significant impact on key areas. This includes supply planning, maintenance, resource deployment, leakage detection and the overall environment.
-
How To Read An Encoder9/13/2013
The HR-E LCD encoder has a 9-digit Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) to show consumption, flow and alarm information. The display automatically toggles between 9-digit and 6-digit consumption, rate of flow and meter model.
-
Determining Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) With Lovibond® OxiDirect3/12/2026
The Biochemical Oxygen Demand over a testing period of n days (BODn) is precisely defined and associated with experimental standards. It represents the quantity of oxygen aspirated in the course of aerobic breakdown of organic substances by microorganisms.
LATEST INSIGHTS ON DRINKING WATER
-
Water agencies across the U.S. are facing a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that poses a conundrum: Should they take a cautious or aggressive approach to treating PFAS contamination in their water system?
-
The U.S. EPA’s 2026 trichloroethylene (TCE) compliance deadlines are now forcing a concrete shift toward source-zone destruction. In situ chemical oxidation (ISCO), sequenced with enhanced bioremediation, is proving to be the most credible path to groundwater contaminant rebound mitigation.
-
Generative design strengthens PR29 investment cases by enabling rigorous optioneering, accurate cost estimates, and clear outcome alignment, helping water companies meet rising regulatory expectations.
-
Our infrastructure systems have operated in managed deterioration for decades. And not surprisingly, once they deteriorate badly enough and cross over into active failure, all cost discipline disappears.
-
Currently, water infrastructure is outdated and fragile, prone to breakages and leaks. Reactive approaches to water infrastructure are only implemented after an incident and are more expensive than simple maintenance fixes. Geotechnical Internet of Things (IoT) devices enable water and wastewater industry professionals to identify and address issues before they escalate into catastrophic events.
-
A new study linking certain groundwater sources to higher Parkinson’s risk underscores a broader question for the water sector: how environmental exposures in drinking water may influence long-term health.
ABOUT DRINKING WATER
In most developed countries, drinking water is regulated to ensure that it meets drinking water quality standards. In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administers these standards under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA).
Drinking water considerations can be divided into three core areas of concern:
- Source water for a community’s drinking water supply
- Drinking water treatment of source water
- Distribution of treated drinking water to consumers
Drinking Water Sources
Source water access is imperative to human survival. Sources may include groundwater from aquifers, surface water from rivers and streams and seawater through a desalination process. Direct or indirect water reuse is also growing in popularity in communities with limited access to sources of traditional surface or groundwater.
Source water scarcity is a growing concern as populations grow and move to warmer, less aqueous climates; climatic changes take place and industrial and agricultural processes compete with the public’s need for water. The scarcity of water supply and water conservation are major focuses of the American Water Works Association.
Drinking Water Treatment
Drinking Water Treatment involves the removal of pathogens and other contaminants from source water in order to make it safe for humans to consume. Treatment of public drinking water is mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the U.S. Common examples of contaminants that need to be treated and removed from water before it is considered potable are microorganisms, disinfectants, disinfection byproducts, inorganic chemicals, organic chemicals and radionuclides.
There are a variety of technologies and processes that can be used for contaminant removal and the removal of pathogens to decontaminate or treat water in a drinking water treatment plant before the clean water is pumped into the water distribution system for consumption.
The first stage in treating drinking water is often called pretreatment and involves screens to remove large debris and objects from the water supply. Aeration can also be used in the pretreatment phase. By mixing air and water, unwanted gases and minerals are removed and the water improves in color, taste and odor.
The second stage in the drinking water treatment process involves coagulation and flocculation. A coagulating agent is added to the water which causes suspended particles to stick together into clumps of material called floc. In sedimentation basins, the heavier floc separates from the water supply and sinks to form sludge, allowing the less turbid water to continue through the process.
During the filtration stage, smaller particles not removed by flocculation are removed from the treated water by running the water through a series of filters. Filter media can include sand, granulated carbon or manufactured membranes. Filtration using reverse osmosis membranes is a critical component of removing salt particles where desalination is being used to treat brackish water or seawater into drinking water.
Following filtration, the water is disinfected to kill or disable any microbes or viruses that could make the consumer sick. The most traditional disinfection method for treating drinking water uses chlorine or chloramines. However, new drinking water disinfection methods are constantly coming to market. Two disinfection methods that have been gaining traction use ozone and ultra-violet (UV) light to disinfect the water supply.
Drinking Water Distribution
Drinking water distribution involves the management of flow of the treated water to the consumer. By some estimates, up to 30% of treated water fails to reach the consumer. This water, often called non-revenue water, escapes from the distribution system through leaks in pipelines and joints, and in extreme cases through water main breaks.
A public water authority manages drinking water distribution through a network of pipes, pumps and valves and monitors that flow using flow, level and pressure measurement sensors and equipment.
Water meters and metering systems such as automatic meter reading (AMR) and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) allows a water utility to assess a consumer’s water use and charge them for the correct amount of water they have consumed.